A Good Edit Would've Fixed That

Once again, I'm judging for Writer's Digest's annual Self-Published Book Awards, and once again, the need for a good edit is crying out to me from the pages of most of the entries.

Mind you, I'm not talking about the occasional typo or missing space between words. Most of you would think those things are nits, just as likely to have been introduced in the typesetting phase as to have been overlooked in a prior editing pass, and I'd agree with you. No, I'm talking about a pervasive inattention to detail, improper usage or faulty constructions running throughout a given book's pages. Has your work fallen victim to any of the following problems?

Repetitive Usage - Do you have certain pet expressions or turns of phrase? It's fine to use them, but use them sparingly. In one of the books I've read this year, the phrase "that's the point" (and its many variants, such as "that's the whole point," "but the entire point of...", etc.) appears so frequently as to be distracting. Variations of the expression are spoken by every character in the book and turn up all too often: in one case, three times on a single page. On another page the phrase appears in two consecutive sentences, spoken by two different characters. Perhaps in that latter case, the author made a purposeful choice to be repetitive. If so, the desired effect isn't apparent.

Convoluted Sentence Structure - If I have to re-read many of your sentences or passages repeatedly to comprehend their meaning, your work fails the clarity test. This seems to be a particular bugaboo of fantasy and science fiction books. Perhaps in trying to achieve a certain tone of scientific realism or mythology, the authors simply go overboard with stilted language. Using big words, lots of technical, philosophical or religious jargon, or many made-up words doesn't automatically inject realism into your work. It's far more likely to introduce confusion. Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find a sentence you've written has more than two sub-clauses or phrases offset by commas, you probably need to think about breaking it up into multiple, smaller sentences.

Losing the Thread of Tense - If your character is recalling or retelling something that happened in the past, the recollection or retelling should generally be given in past tense---and stay in past tense. Consider this (totally fabricated) example:

I will always remember that summer. We went out on the boat nearly every day, and wished we'd never have to go back home. That year, my goal was to catch the biggest bass so I go to town one afternoon, I buy new bait and stronger fishing line. I get out on the water the next morning, earlier than anyone else. I cast my line and wait.

The first two sentences are in past tense, which is fine. The third sentence begins in past tense (goal was to catch the biggest bass) but then switches to present tense (I go to town, I buy new bait) and tense remains in the present for the rest of the passage.

Switching tense correctly is particularly important when the narrative is intended to go back and forth between past and present tense, such as when a detective is investigating a cold case and has to interview a bunch of people about their memories of the events in question. When tense changes, is the interviewee still talking about his past experience, or sharing some new realization with the detective in the present day? Tense is what's supposed to clue the reader in on this sort of thing, so if you're switching tense incorrectly or unintentionally, you're confusing the reader.

Using Internal Monologue for Omniscient Exposition - An internal monologue is nothing more than a character talking to him- or herself. We've all talked to ourselves at some point, we all know what it's like and how we "sound" in our heads when we're doing it.

We talk to ourselves to cogitate on things, refresh our memory of events, go over mental to-do lists and the like, but real-life internal monologues are not like journal entries. They do not provide a factual accounting of events, because the person experiencing the internal monologue already lived those events and knows what happened. They also cannot provide a factual accounting of events that were not witnessed personally by the individual having the internal monologue. Look at the following two examples---again, examples I've constructed just for this blog entry:

Mike couldn't stop obsessing over the events of that night. Three a.m., and his mind was still spinning.

Garrett refused to stop drinking, and I knew I shouldn't let him have his keys back, but I was afraid he'd shoot me if I didn't hand them over. He was doing about eighty when he hit that curve, still swigging from a bottle of Jack. He never knew what hit him. The funeral's tomorrow. I know what everyone there will be thinking, and they'll be right. It was all my fault.

Guilty or not, Mike knew he'd be expected to make a showing at the memorial service.

Compare this example to:

Mike couldn't stop obsessing over the events of that night. Three a.m., and his mind was still spinning.

What was I thinking?! I never should've given Garrett his keys, whether he was waving a gun in my face or not. Now he's dead and it's all my fault. How can I face everyone at the funeral tomorrow?

Guilty or not, Mike knew he'd be expected to make a showing at the memorial service.

In the first example, the author is using an internal monologue to present expository (factual or background) information from an omniscient point of view: the point of view of someone who knows, and can see, all that's happening or has happened to anyone involved in the story or setting, and also knows what any character is thinking or has thought at any given time.

The first monologue relates factual information Mike has no reason to be re-stating in his own head. It also reports on events which occurred outside Mike's presence; Mike might've learned how fast Garrett was going from a police report or news story, but how could he know Garrett was still swigging from a bottle when he hit the curve? And how could he know Garrett "never knew what hit him"?

The second monologue is more realistic. In it, Mike doesn't report on events, he reconsiders his role in them. He expresses his feelings about the events, and fearfully anticipates what's coming next.

This blog post is getting pretty long, so I'll wrap it up for today and report on some other common problems in a future post or posts. Bottom line: if my allotment of books from the contest gives an accurate indication, about 19 out of 20 self-published books need a professional edit---and aren't getting one. It's a real shame when a self-publishing author gets the tough stuff right (believable dialogue, pacing, plot, characterization) but releases a book that's still hopelessly marred by problems like those above---problems that could've been easily remedied by a good edit.

I'm Back - With A Post About 'The Rules'

I've been away because I've been judging in this year's Writer's Digest Self-Published Books contest, and unlike some other contest judges I know of, don't think it's fair to reject any entry after reading only the first paragraph---or less. I read all of the 25 books allotted to me from cover to cover, and went back to re-read certain passages in most of them when compiling my judging notes. I say this not because I'm fishing for compliments on my judge-ery, but because the experience of reading all of those books, in a short period of time, in the context of a contest really opened my eyes to something: strict obedience to The Rules is more likely to ruin your work than breaking them.

You know about The Rules, right? That collection of unofficial, yet oft-posted admonitions purporting to warn fiction writers about the prose and story bugaboos that will result in instant rejection? Things like, "delete all adverbs," "vampire stories don't sell anymore," and "publishers hate prologues"...ringing any bells?

As we all know, it's not difficult to find numerous exceptions to any such rule among mainstream, bestselling books. But the response to these rebuttals is invariably some airy statement about how big name authors can get away with that stuff because they have an established fan base, whereas you, a mere beginner in the game, never could. This statement and all its variations are wrong.

Paradoxically, the only distinction between a flawed piece of prose and a flawless one is the question of whether or not the prose sings. In other words, if we feel it does not sing, we say the prose is flawed. It's usually pretty easy to zoom in on problematic sentences or passages that seem awkard, and if certain aspects of those sentences or passages seem to repeat in other works you judge to be flawed (e.g., heavy use of adverbs), it doesn't seem like much of a leap to conclude the repeated items are the root of the problem. It seems very logical to conclude that if only those specific items were eliminated, the prose would be flawless. But as it turns out, this is a HUGE leap and it's NOT logical. There are only two possible reasons for finding broken rules in big-name authors' books: either the broken rule wasn't noticed, or else it was noticed but editors deemed it too minor to bother changing.

If a flaw was noticed but left unchanged, the author isn't necessarily 'getting away with it.' Readers notice when prose is awkward, but they're not generally peeved enough about it to return the book for a refund. Even so, many an established author has found his readership fading right in line with his attention to detail, so breaking The Rules isn't some automatic privilege of becoming a big-name author. I'm sure anyone reading this can think of at least one former-favorite author whose books you stopped reading because the quality of the work seemed to be slipping, or getting repetitive. It's not like authors have to toe the line right up until they hit the Times' bestseller list, but can relax from there on in. Sometimes flaws go uncorrected simply because in terms of time, money and human resources, the publisher's judgment came down on the side of "leave it alone".

If the so-called flaw wasn't noticed, that was either due to a simple editorial oversight or because the so-called flaw wasn't perceived as a flaw at all. In either case, the author still isn't getting away with anything. The question of whether or not the prose is flawed ultimately comes down to each reader's individual experience, and if a reader doesn't like the work, it doesn't really matter what his specific reasons are. That reader will come away thinking the writing was weak.

When a so-called flaw isn't perceived by readers as a flaw at all, the work isn't some exception that proves The Rules. It's an example of excellent authorship, and excellent authorship isn't about how many adverbs you use, or whether your story has a prologue, or whether your protagonist is a vampire. Excellent authorship in fiction is about storytelling. It's about pulling the reader or listener into a world you created and convincing her to care enough about the characters in that world to invest many hours of time and effort on learning more about what happens to them. It's about engaging the reader or listener so fully that he literally shuts off all awareness of the "real" world around him, whether because he's immersed in the plot or fascinated by the characters---or both.

The thing is, excellent authorship cannot be defined in any fixed manner; what makes one piece of work wonderful may be entirely different than what makes another piece of work equally good. For example, many people would laud Terry Pratchett for the humor in his Discworld books, but that doesn't mean that as a rule, all novelists should strive to inject humor into their work. Similarly, many others greatly enjoy the occult elements in Anne Rice's vampire and witch novels, but that doesn't mean adding occult elements to your novel will make it a surefire winner.

Conversely, choosing what to leave out of your novel by hewing to The Rules like they're your religion will not make your novel a surefire winner, either. What it WILL do is drain all the life, personality and originality from your work. In judging, I read many books that were absolutely pristine in terms of following The Rules yet were so boring, predictable or colorless that reading them felt like homework. Many aspiring authors don't seem to realize this, but an author's unique "voice", his or her specific style of communicating, is defined by when and how that author breaks The Rules. If you never break The Rules, you will never find or develop your author's voice. And as a reader, having recently read 25 novels from different authors in rapid succession, I can tell you that I'll take adverbs, prologues and vampires over boring in my novels any day.

Some of the best work I read broke numerous rules, and in every one of those cases the storytelling was so powerful that I didn't even notice any rules being broken until much later, when I went back to try and put my finger on the specific qualities that made certain entries so much stronger than others. At that point I had my eye out for The Rules, and having been schooled in them for so many years I suspected I'd find the stronger entries were stronger precisely because those authors managed to avoid breaking The Rules. But I was wrong.

In comparing the greats to the not-so-greats, there was plenty of rule-breaking happening on both sides of the fence. The only difference was, in the greats I didn't notice the rule-breaking during my first read-through, whereas in the not-so-greats I HAD noticed. It became very clear to me that what separates successful prose from flawed prose isn't the question of whether or not the author uses a prologue, adverbs, vampire characters, or breaks any other rule: it's whether the author succeeded in pulling me in. Period. But since there's no simple way to explain how to pull a reader in, no universal method or style that works for all writers in all genres at all times, we tend to find other, easier mile markers upon which to hang our hats. Hence, The Rules are born. Hence, huge populations of writers become convinced that good fiction writing is about following rules, not storytelling. I think this must be because it's very comforting to believe there's some secret formula or magic method that invariably leads to success, and very scary to think there isn't.

In my critiques of those 25 books, my notes on how the books could be improved had to do with things like characterization, phrasing too awkward to be easily understood, story arc, plot logic and pacing. I didn't advise anyone to kill the adverbs, strike the prologue, or eliminate the undead from their stories. I'd already read plenty of work that had done all those things and more in service (or servitude) to The Rules, yet still failed to hold my rapt attention. In the end, the books that piqued my interest and held it were the ones I judged most promising, regardless of The Rules. Plenty of these needed a good edit, a little work on pacing or character, or improvement in some other area of mechanics, but all of those things are easy to fix. If your story lacks personality, originality, or imagination, neither I nor anyone else can tell you how to fix those problems. It's like telling a musician to play better.

If you must have rules, I'd say these are the only two you need:

1. If it weakens, or adds nothing to the work, change it.

2. If it strengthens the work, leave it alone.

I think you'll find that these two rules alone cover everything from spelling and grammar to plot and pacing, and that there's no flaw you can think of in a piece of prose that can't be fixed through the application of one or the other of these two rules. Even murkier areas like character, theme and tone are covered by these two rules, because every choice you make in drawing character, conveying theme and setting tone will weaken, add nothing to, or strengthen the work overall.

But as I'm sure you've noticed, these rules are fairly useless unless you can tell the difference between what weakens/adds nothing to, or strengthens, a piece of work. And if you can already tell the difference, then you don't need these rules to begin with. Unfortunately, there's no rubric to which you can refer on this, it comes down to your gut and the reactions of your readers. Even spelling and grammar aren't so clear-cut as you might think; believe it or not, there are times when purposeful misspelling and incorrect grammar really can strengthen a story; just ask Burroughs or Vonnegut.

In the end, the inherent problem with conventional wisdom is that if you follow it, you end up with a conventional product for conventional people. And when was the last time you heard a novel praised for being conventional?